


Illuminated

by ImaginedLife



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-02-27
Updated: 2013-04-03
Packaged: 2017-12-03 20:21:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 6,101
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/702268
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ImaginedLife/pseuds/ImaginedLife
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock goes off on a case alone and gets himself rather unfortunately injured. <br/>~</p><p>In this moment, folded into his favourite chair so efficiently it makes him feel small, Sherlock feels. He doesn't have much experience with that, but some rarely addressed part of his mind tells him that this is what fear feels like. Like being trapped in a body that is failing him. A body that's no longer providing him with the means to do the only thing that makes him feel alive. Because honestly, how is anyone supposed to observe without being able to see? </p><p>~<br/>I suck at summaries, so I won't go overboard, but this is going to be angsty. I will update the tags as I go along. Eventual Johnlock.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> So I'm relatively new to this site(I used to publish on fanfiction.net) and I've never published anything before. Also, this is the first Sherlock fic I'm actually allowing anyone to read, so don't kill me, okay? Or actually, do tell me if I suck. I could always do with some feedback I suppose.

**Prologue**

_It was dark. Not the sort of dark that is observed during night time, but dark in a manner that affected my respiratory system. I was never prone to claustrophobia, but in that particular moment it was difficult to breathe. I do not, however, recall feeling any kind of resentment towards this situation. I was in distress, yes. I couldn't see. I had no real knowledge of my location inside the building. The darkness was uncomfortable. But I was occupied._

_There had been no cases to speak of for more than seven days, and because the boredom usually shifts into depression after two hours, fifteen minutes, I was... uncomfortable. Displeased. Perhaps, if I had been less frustrated, I would not have been so eager to agree to this. As it was, the relief was too great to refuse._

_John still resents me for leaving him behind, I think. He understands my reasons to do so, but he's angry. He believes he could have done something to prevent or change the events that ensued. I find it more likely that he would have been injured or killed. He seemed angry when I told him that. I think he must have taken it personally. He does that._

_He also considers me insane because I allowed Moriarty to, how did he put it again, pull my strings and make me dance for him, but that's not the way I see it. I am aware, of course, that he intended to destroy me. I am also very much aware that he is familiar with the discomfort I was in when he contacted me. Distracting me seemed almost an act of kindness at the time._

_I suspected that he had the building riddled with explosives of some kind. I was correct. My failing, however, was that I didn't locate them in time. I was unprepared for the darkness. I also expected to see him at some point. I had already seen his face multiple times. Given his clear obsession with me, I saw no reason for him to stay away. But he did stay away. I never saw his face again._

_The explosion was less intense than anticipated. I was on the second floor when it occurred. It was shortly after I realised that there was not, in fact, a victim in this case other than myself. I had been inside the building for three minutes, forty-eight seconds._

_There was a blast. It was loud, and I was startled for an instant, but it was clear that it was not the explosion that was intended to kill me. I was told later that only the top floor had been destroyed by the bomb. It was the ensuing fire that took the rest of the building and what I believed to be an essential part of myself. Chemicals, they say. I deleted most of the information. I had no wish to know at the time._

_'I will burn you.' I must say I'm surprised. I didn't expect him to be so... literal._

_That moment is one of the very few instances in my life that I felt panic. I remember clearly the time I spent running(thirty-two seconds) and the time I spent falling down a flight of stairs(eighteen seconds). I remember scrambling for the door handle in the dark, it took me a full minute to locate it. I remember the heat, the sound of growing flames behind me, the adrenaline, and also the fear. I remember opening the door, just one door left and I would be safe. It was strange, the sudden longing for safety. I find safety hateful._

_I never made it to the final door. The fire consumed the stairs I had ungracefully descended only moments ago, and by the time I had managed to cross the room(in my defence, it was quite large and it was, as stated before, very dark) everything around me was burning. The fire was growing at an unusual speed. The flames illuminated the room and I could see the thick clouds of smoke rising towards the ceiling, attempting to get away through the windows, but trapped._

_From this moment on, the memory is incomplete. I remember that I was suddenly trapped, driven into a corner by flames that seemed taller than myself. I remember shielding my face because the smoke was causing me pain. Somewhere in the building, someone was screaming. Since I had already established before that there was no one present other than myself, I must conclude that it was my own voice I heard._

_I do not know how much time passed before the door suddenly opened, violently, the handle slamming against the wall. There were voices, they were screaming, and in one small instant when I took my arms away from my face, surrounded by flames I saw John's face. He was screaming as well. I couldn't understand the words, but my name was there a few times. I do not remember how many. He was struggling against two pairs of anonymous arms holding him back, and to this day my mind keeps feeding me images of the look on his face(I believe it was fear, absolute, sickening terror. I know it was, because I felt it as well). It was the last thing I saw before-_

_Before nothing. Before the darkness._

_It was the last thing I saw, period._


	2. Chapter 2

_Damn you, Sherlock. Damn you._

They had a fight that morning. Sherlock, bored, depressed and frustrated, will lash out at anything and anyone when he's in this state, but somehow it still angers John that he's no exception. So they yelled, and they said things John regrets now and honestly, who knows about Sherlock? He rarely apologizes and frankly, John doesn't expect that of him any more. He simply needed some air, needed to not look at that face for a while, not listen to the merciless insults and the deductions about parts of his life that he doesn't even want to think about, much less hear about from his pain-in-the-ass flatmate. John Watson's patience isn't endless the way everyone seems to think it is, and he doesn't take kindly to having all his buttons pushed simply because Sherlock is bored. 'I don't want to hate you, Sherlock,' he said, 'but you're sure as hell not making it very difficult.' From somewhere inside the tangle of limbs and blue dressing gown curled up on the sofa, Sherlock huffed, his vibrant eyes empty and focused on nothing in particular. John slammed the door harder than he needed to. He heard Mrs. Hudson's footfalls ascending the stairs before he even made it outside.

He was in a bar when he got the call, chatting up some girl and ordering his third pint. The girl was pretty, easy to talk to and much too young for him. She told him her name a few moments earlier, batting her eyelashes at him in that very obvious way(if Sherlock were here, he would roll his eyes at that and point out her cheap jewellery and the way her dress wasn't really her size). Apparently, she disagreed with him on the age difference.

'Fuck,' John said before hanging up on Lestrade and scrambling for his coat. 'Bloody fucking hell.' He remembers the look on the girl's face when he knocked over his pint and rushed out of the bar, the whole world slowing down as the glass shattered on the wooden floor.

He's in a cab now, and traffic is impossible. He curses to himself again, the panic making its way into his bloodstream and settling inside his brain. The world is still moving in slow motion, every second seeming endless until it's over. That's familiar; it's something he learned in Afghanistan. Nothing matters now, everything is endless and quiet and his mind will slow down until there is only one thing left. This will last until the crisis is over, or until he dies, but right now John is not the one at risk of dying and somehow, that just makes it so much worse.

_I should have known you would do this, you sodding fool. You've been on that sofa for a week now. I should have realised._

It's taking bloody ages. Leave it to Sherlock to do something idiotic when traffic is this impossible. John feels sick to his stomach suddenly, the thought that he might not even get a chance to _try_ and save him almost too much to bear. 

  _I don't want to hate you, Sherlock, but you're sure as hell not making it very difficult._

_Fuck. That can not be the last thing I said to him._  
 _I'm sorry, Sherlock. I'm so sorry._

He makes a decision in a split second. 'Keep it,' he says to the cabbie who wants to hand him his change, and then he's running. That, too, is familiar. This he is good at. He hasn't been to this part of town before, but he can hear the sirens in the distance and perhaps he's imagining things, but he thinks he can smell the smoke in the air.

Lestrade is standing wide eyed in front of a storage building of some kind, talking on his phone and gesturing wildly. John nearly knocks him over when he gets there, breathless and just barely managing not to limp. 'What happened?' he says, astonished. The top floor of the building(it looks like it used be three storeys high) has been entirely blown to high heavens, and there are flames licking at everything flammable and rising up to the sky. There's a strange smell in the air, not just a regular fire then.

Greg looks desperate and positively helpless. 'I don't know,' he says, putting a hand on John's shoulder. 'But they're trying to get him out.'

John stares at the scene in front of him again, the blinding fire, the building already half destroyed. 'Fuck,' he says softly, just before something snaps in him. 'Fuck. FUCK!'  
He's running again before Greg gets a chance to stop him, but he's held back by people from the fire brigade when he gets to the door. 'Alright,' he says, feigning a calmness he doesn't feel, 'let me through. Let me through _please._ '  
The woman who answers is taller than him, but she looks fragile. No problem there. 'I'm sorry, sir,' she says, 'but we can't let you through. The door is blocked and-'  
She's on the ground faster than even he'd anticipated and obviously, she's very surprised. He manages to get to the door, where he can feel the heat of the fire on his skin and hear the screaming.  
  
Wait. _Fuck. The_ _screaming._ It's more horrible than he could have imagined, and it cuts through him like a blade.

'Sir, you need to get away from there. You can't be there when we open that door. You need to get away from the door, do you understand?'  
He doesn't even really hear. All he knows in that instant is that he _needs_ to get in there, needs to stop this from happening, needs to... anything but stand here like a fool, useless and helpless. But then two pairs of arms are holding him back and despite being strong for a man his size, he can't fight them off. That doesn't mean he doesn't try, though. Sickening fear must be empowering.

He doesn't know how much time passes before suddenly, finally, the door opens and the smoke pushes its way into the outside air aggressively. The smell is horrible and the heat is searing, but it doesn't fully register. It doesn't register, because the door is open and the room behind it is entirely on fire and Sherlock is in the corner, half hidden from view by the searing flames, shielding his face with his forearms and still screaming.  
John doesn't really know what he's saying, but he's screaming as well and then, very briefly, Sherlock lowers his arms and looks at him, looks at him with eyes filled with pure, unmasked fear and John thinks he will die, he will die right here if he doesn't do something.

 The flames are shrinking now and people from the fire brigade are moving cautiously around the room, attempting to get deeper into the building. The screaming, however, has ceased and made room for coughing and desperate, wheezing gasps. Sherlock's face disappears from view then- did he pass out? Did he-

  _No. No, you didn't, you goddamn idiot, you're still here and they're gonna get you out so I can thoroughly kick your ass._

  _If you die, I swear to god I will kill you._

  _I should never have left you like that. I'm sorry. God, I'm so sorry._

A small, shiny ray of relief flares up in John's brain when two men wearing gas masks emerge from the ruined building, carrying a slumped, slender figure over both their shoulders.  
'I'm a doctor,' John says to the people still attempting to hold him back. 'I'm a doctor and he's my friend, please let me go.' When they fail to comply fast enough, he elbows the man on the left side right in the stomach, then punches the other one in the face. _Sorry_ , he thinks as he breaks free. _But it's not like I have a choice here._

 Sherlock is out cold, but he has a pulse. _Thank god, he has a pulse._ His skin is sickly pale, covered with ashes and his breathing- damn it, that can't be good. It's his arms, however, that mostly draw John's attention. The fabric of his sleeves is unrecognisable, completely burned away, revealing scorched, blistered skin. It smells of death, of pain and despair. It smells of Afghanistan. John feels sick. 'Where the HELL are those paramedics?' he yells, and as he hears his own voice break he realises for the first time that he's been crying. How long?

The paramedics approach through the debris scattered across the area, carrying a stretcher. John knows he needs to let go, but they still have to pry his hands away where they're clutched in iron grips in Sherlock's hair and left wrist. They take him away, and John, insisting on coming with them, is escorted into the ambulance as well with a stranger's hand on his back.

The following minutes are a blur of sirens, a roaring engine, oxygen masks, paramedics talking busily and John's own mind gaining speed again; the slow motion ended when he felt Sherlock's pulse. He stares at Sherlock's face, his eyes still closed. 

  _I'm sorry, Sherlock. You'll see me when you wake up._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah, I know. I just lit Sherlock on fire. I'm so sorry. But I promise there will be some happiness to this fic. Eventually.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry, that took a little long. I work a lot. Again, I welcome feedback but please be gentle :)

John does not like hospitals. They remind him that everything is finite. His youth, the idealism from his teenage years, the joy he used to feel in saving people, his own life.

And Sherlock. Somehow John, who was always painfully aware of the amount of ways a person can cease to exist, conveniently forgot to put his best friend on his list of Things That Are Finite. Perhaps it's because sometimes, it's easy to forget that Sherlock is even human. The man doesn't eat, barely sleeps and sometimes doesn't even speak unless he absolutely has to. His energy seems almost mechanical, like it has an off switch, and once that switch is used Sherlock transforms into an empty shell. Only when he is solving a case or playing the violin does the man seem alive, and even then there is a subhuman quality to it that is both the reason for John's fascination and the cause of all their misunderstandings. In a lot of ways, Sherlock is more like a force of nature than a human being, and just as unpredictable, and that makes it hard to think of him as mortal.

Right now, however, that force of nature is unconscious in a hospital bed, attached to a monitor and breathing more shallowly than John is comfortable with, and it makes him look vulnerable and unnervingly  _human._ The hospital gown has stripped him of the air of superiority that he tries to emphasise with expensive suits, but it is the continuous beeping of the monitor that is both reassuring and frightening to John. Sherlock has a heart and it's beating. But that also means that someone can snuff it out. Someone almost did.

He looks better now that he's taken care of and his arms have been bandaged, but John can still smell the skin burning. he shivers. The burns, however, are the least of his concerns. His gaze shifts to Sherlock's sleeping face, resting on the bandages over his eyes, and his fingers tighten around the already crumpled styrofoam cup Lestrade brought him hours ago. There is no news yet, but John knows enough about chemical fires. He's been praying, desperately, to a god he doesn't even believe in, that Afghanistan has made him assume the worst at all times, but he fears. For so many things.

It occurs to him then that he should probably call Mycroft. Someone asked him in the ambulance if Sherlock had any family, but it slipped his mind until now. He shifts back and forth in his chair for a couple of minutes, unwilling to leave Sherlock like this, before rising to his feet. He sways a little. His legs are shaking. 

His usually so steady surgeon's hands tremble when he dials the number, an accurate representation of the way his mind feels. It seems to tremble inside of his skull, buzzing with worry and leftover adrenaline. The world seems very small.  
'Mycroft, it's John Watson. You should probably clear your schedule for the day.'  
~

The fact that he knows the doctor responsible for Sherlock almost makes the whole thing worse. The man was already here when John was in training. His hair has more grey to it now and little wrinkles have appeared in the corners of his eyes, but when he speaks, it's in the same tone. John rather liked him back then, but now, the sympathy in his naturally reassuring voice is strangely irritating. 

'Your friend is rather lucky you found him in time,' the man says.

'That depends,' John replies. 'Tell me. And don't try to ease me into anything. I'm a doctor, you know.'

'He has second degree burns on both his forearms. They're extensive, but they should heal without complications if taken care of properly. There will be scarring, though.'

'That shouldn't be a problem,' John says. 'What else?' He is surprised by the calmth in his own voice. If ever there was a time and a place for that, this isn't it.

'Well, his lungs took quite a beating too, but he's breathing alright, considering. The real problem...' He pauses there, in the middle of a sentence, and John's stomach clenches. He knows this tone. He knows it too well.

'The real problem,' the man continues, 'is his eyes.'

'Chemicals,' John says. It's a statement rather than a question. He knows what comes next. 'Will he see again?'

The genuine sorrow in the doctor's eyes is almost comforting. Almost. The hand on his shoulder feels unreal, like a projection rather than something physical. 'I'm sorry, doctor Watson,' he says, and the words seep into John's blood and down to his marrow.  _No. This isn't happening._ He turns away, shoves himself out from under the man's hand. He barely makes it back to his chair before his knees give out. His visions swims, the room shifting out of focus. 

'Fuck,' he hears himself say. 'Fuck, no.'

When he looks up, Mycroft is standing in the doorway, white as a sheet and a look in his eyes that John has never seen on him before. Complete, utter horror.  
~

Sherlock Holmes is not an unemotional man. John knows this. He has seen past his friend's cold exterior plenty of times, and it never unnerved him before. He has seen so many versions of him; Sherlock delighted about a particularly gruesome case, Sherlock sulking, Sherlock heavily depressed, Sherlock feigning sadness, Sherlock freaking out over seeing something inexplicable. But John has never, ever, been affected by anything as much as he is by Sherlock having a panic attack.

He wakes shortly after the doctor leaves the room. Mycroft is still standing in the doorway, wide eyed and lost for words, clutching his umbrella even though there hasn't been any rain for days. He wakes the way he does basically everything; sudden and more intense than is good for him. One second he's out cold, the next he's upright in bed, panic painfully visible in his features. His hands flutter immediately towards his eyes, and feeling the bandages there he suddenly seems to snap.

There is something terrifying about seeing a man usually to in control hyperventilate. It's like John's world suddenly shifts, morphing into one where their roles are reversed. Because John is frozen. He sits there, gaping like an idiot, and he physically can't speak, can't move, can't feel anything besides the ice in his gut.

What gets to him most, though, is that when Sherlock regains full consciousness and finds enough of his voice to speak with, the words are far from what John expected. 

'Mycroft,' he shouts, and his voice is breaking, and in that moment there is nothing left of the person John has been living with. 'Mycroft, I can't see.'

Astonished, John shifts his gaze to Mycroft, who is suddenly snapping out of his trance at the sound of his name. For an instant, his eyes flicker with something John can't identify. He moves slowly, steadily and with perfect posture like always, but when he passes a still gaping John there is an irregularity to his breathing. 'Get someone,' he says softly, but urgently to the wall behind John's shoulder. John obeys, pushing the little button beside the bed with hands that are finally steady.

Mycroft is standing next to the bed now, only inches away from where Sherlock's hands are grasping at thin air. He surges forward, grabbing both of his brother's wrists and holding him still. Sherlock freezes, the frantic movements ceasing, but the hyperventilation continues, scraping across John's brain. It sounds horrible.

'It's alright, Sherlock,' Mycroft says, and his tone is so different from his usual detached way of speaking that he looks surprised at himself. 'It's only a dream. Go back to sleep.' Sherlock nods, visibly scrambling for control over his breathing. To John's astonishment, he seems to be relaxing slightly. 

The doctor from before comes rushing into the room then(John realises that he can't even remember the man's name). He looks bewildered, like he was in the middle of something. John stares at him for a moment, scrambling in his brain for coherency. He clears his throat. 'Maybe,' he says, and his voice is much steadier than he expected it to be, 'maybe you should sedate him.'

John doesn't have time to process what it is the doctor gives Sherlock, but it's effective enough, and soon he's asleep again, the terror never quite leaving his face. Mycroft stands perfectly still for a couple of seconds, shock apparent on his face, but then he releases Sherlock's wrists, straightens his jacket and strides out of the room. John hesitates, but only briefly, before running after him.   
~

'You don't smoke,' John says stupidly. It's the only thing he can think of. Mycroft is standing on the pavement, fingers shaking slightly, but otherwise seeming perfectly calm. 'I do today,' he responds.

'So, uhm,' John begins, shuffling his feet awkwardly. 'What just happened?'

Mycroft stiffens a little. He seems uneasy. 'He used to have nightmares. I'm not sure he even remembers, he was very young.' He turns around then, looking John straight in the eyes. There's an intensity to his gaze that John hasn't seen before, but otherwise he's still showing no emotion.

'He used to dream about being in a dark room. He'd wake up hyperventilating, saying he couldn't see. I would calm him down, our parents were usually... unavailable.'  
  
'Ah,' John says. 'I take it this was before the... old scores?'  
  
Mycroft glares at him, stomping out his cigarette. 'Yes.'

They stand there, silently, for a while after that, until it begins raining and Mycroft disappears into the black car John is a little too familiar with. 'I'll be back,' he says. John watches as he drives away. 


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Angst. I guess that sums it up.

He's sitting in his chair by the fire now. He's in his bathrobe, feet curled up underneath him as he folds his entire body into the seat. He's staring out the window like he used to, with his fingers stapled under his chin and his gaze absent, but when John bends over him to put a steaming mug of tea on the coffee table, it strikes him that his eyes are vacant.

The discolouration isn't that bad, considering. There is some scarring, too, but Sherlock doesn't seem to be wasting any thoughts on something so trivial. Like he would. It's the expression, or rather the lack of expression, in his stare when he looks at people. When he looks at people at all. John once found himself nearly withering away with guilt and frustration when Sherlock inadvertedly directed his gaze on him while thinking. It still makes him shudder. In short terms, it just means that their eye contact is minimal, if present at all. It makes John uncomfortable and Sherlock- well, Sherlock doesn't really have any need for eye contact anymore, does he?

'Eight days.'

John's voice sounds funny breaking through the silence, bouncing off the peeling wallpaper in the living room. Sherlock flinches, but only slightly, then tilts his head in acknowledgement.

'It's been eight days. Eight days, Sherlock, since you've spoken out of your own initiative.'

Sherlock sighs, seemingly debating whether to dignify that statement with an answer at all. He relents. Out of kindness. 'Your point?'

'My point-' John pauses there, to address the sudden flaring in his body, the bitter taste welling up in his mouth, desperate anger trying to tear itself out of him. He breathes. Two breaths, three. 'My point,' he continues, gentler this time, 'is that you can't do this to yourself.'

That makes Sherlock turn around, folding himself against the armrest of his chair. He attempts to stare at John, but ends up glaring at a bookshelf. John leaves it that way.

'Do this to myself? Do what, exactly?'

'Well,' John says, shuffling his feet against the linoleum, 'this. All of this. All this nothingness. Because that's what it is, it's retreating into that chair saying nothing, no doubt thinking about countless things and telling me nothing, or anybody, ever.' He has to stop there again, not because he's angry but because he simply cannot find the words. Sherlock seems to notice, because he lowers his voice when he speaks again.

'I do not see what telling you or anybody what goes on in my head could accomplish.'

John sighs, out of frustration but also out of helplessness and concern. 'People can help you, Sherlock. I can help you.'

'Why? Because you feel some ridiculous sense of duty out of an even more misplaced sense of guilt? And about what, leaving me alone? You are not my babysitter, John, nor my personal bodyguard, and I will not have you drag me into an ongoing argument regarding your frankly laughable desire to protect me.' It's coming out of his mouth like ice, like a storm, and for a brief moment he's the same person who told John _I don't have friends_. John stares at him, seconds, trying to come up with a different way to interpret these words, but failing.

'Obviously,' is what comes out of his mouth, and he surprises even himself with the emptiness in his voice when he says it. 'Obviously, you'd rather spend the rest of your life alone in that chair. How dense of me. I should have known that.'

'Yes, you should have,' Sherlock spits back at him, realising with perfect clarity that the old version of him, the one who was still undamaged, wouldn't have deemed that worthy of an answer at all.

He zones out after that, and John and his perfectly straight soldier's posture and the wounded look in his eyes when he turns around, they go completely unnoticed by Sherlock, who is already sinking back into the swamps of his mind.  
\--

The darkness seems to be enveloping him completely these days. Sherlock never anticipated for the way it would consume him, paralyze him, leave him more isolated than he was before. It is, without a doubt, the most uncomfortable thing he has ever experienced, but there is no way to communicate it to anyone. Frankly, he doesn't see the point. John seems to be going through some kind of crisis that Sherlock doesn't quite grasp, even though he understands it perfectly, logically speaking. All he knows is that he doesn't know how to handle such things.

And John should know that, shouldn't he? They've lived together long enough that even before this, John should have realised that Sherlock Holmes has one failing: dealing with emotions, either his own or someone else's. It's not even a real failing, is it? Sherlock has always considered this a strength; never being distracted from his brain, by anything.

Except in this moment, folded into his favourite chair so efficiently it makes him feel small, Sherlock feels. He doesn't have much experience with that, but some rarely addressed part of his mind tells him that this is what fear feels like. Like being trapped in a body that is failing him. A body that's no longer providing him with the means to do the only thing that makes him feel alive. Because honestly, how is anyone supposed to observe without being able to see?

Ironically, John is remarkably observant these days. Somehow, Sherlock never has to ask him for anything, not that he would have. Not anymore. There is a difference between having someone else do something you're perfectly capable of doing yourself and having someone wait on you like an invalid. This last thing is what has been driving Sherlock out of his already tormented mind these days, but John doesn't realise. He can be so dense.

The room is dark. It always is, these days. But somehow, Sherlock can still tell when it's daylight he's missing out on or artificial light. Quite frankly, it is the only thing he has learned since this happened. He doesn't really see the point in doing the excercises John's been trying to force upon him. The first week after the hospital finally allowed Sherlock to go home, John tried to get him 'accustomed to this new situation.' Sherlock scowled when he uttered that sentence. There is no getting accustomed to eternal emptiness, neverending boredom. Is there really no one in his life who understands that?

Thinking about it, Mycroft is, ironically, probably the only person who even comes close to grasping this concept. He remembers waking up to a dark, empty room. He vaguely remembers saying something in that moment, calling out. He remembers the fog in his brain. The only thing he remembers vividly is Mycroft telling him it was only a dream, and then darkness again. He would never admit to anyone the reassurance this brought him. He would never admit to his brother that in this instant, he must have forgotten about the dispute that has been driving them apart for years now. He remembers now, so that particular moment of weakness doesn't bear any significance.

Still, Mycroft keeps coming to visit, even if Sherlock rarely speaks these days. He sits in John's chair across the room from Sherlock(that's obvious, because it sounds almost the same as when John sits down), absolutely silent, and he barely even moves. They haven't spoken since that day in the hospital. But he comes. Even when Sherlock gives him no indication that he wants him to. He comes.

Sherlock just sits there. Lestrade has been by, and Mrs. Hudson comes in from time to time to bring food. Apperently, that's her way of communicating how sorry she is, and if he were his old self, Sherlock might have found this endearing. But these days, he doesn't find anything endearing. He doesn't really feel anymore. Not that he used to feel much to begin with.

There is nothing these days, except the sensation of being trapped, the feeling of complete, utter uselessness and this never subsiding sense of paralysing fear. It eats at his brain, a little at a time, and every day a little piece of him dies. This, this is what John either can not see or refuses to see. Life has no meaning without the work. Evidently, the work was his entire identity. Even Sherlock himself could never have accounted for that.

So he sits there, and he finds himself completely incapable of caring as John leaves the room. He knows, in some part of his brain, that he has said something hurtful, but it doesn't seem to matter. It never matters. And so he wonders, sitting there exactly like he used to, but so different it is almost unbearable. And he wonders. He wonders if this is what his entire life has been building up to. He wonders is this is his punishment for a life of shutting people out; being condemned to a life of being shut out from the only thing he ever cared about. He tries to analyse this question, but there is no answer. There is only darkness.

He gets up, scrambles across the coffee table for his cigarettes. It takes him about three times the amount of time it would have taken him before all this. That's an eternity for someone like him.  
He knows, in some part of his brain, that his lighter has to be somewhere near him. That doesn't help him, though. Not this time.  
He doesn't know how much time he spends wandering through the living room like an idiot, stumbling over pieces of furniture he never consciously realised were there. All he knows is that somehow, he ends up on the floor, chin on his knees, and a completely unfamiliar sense of despair washes over him as he realises that his life of being completely independent of the absolutely dense people around him has come to an end. And for the first time in a long time, he touches his face and finds moisture at the top of his fingers. He weeps. And even though there is no one to witness this event, the shame is there the entire time, lingering, eating at the edges of his soul.  
\--

John comes home to a dark living room. For a moment, a long, hopeful moment, he thinks that maybe for the first time in weeks, Sherlock has gone to bed by himself. But when he turns around to put away his damp coat, a shadow in the corner of the room catches his eye.

Sherlock is sitting there, on the linoleum that's freezing John's feet through his socks barely thirty seconds after taking his shoes off. John curses himself internally for not remembering to turn up the heating. This thought, however, is soon forgotten when he realises that the figure crouched in the corner of the room is shaking ever so slightly, unlit cigarette dangling from his right hand.

He lights Sherlock's cigarette with a lighter from the kitchen drawer, willing himself not to think about the amount of time his friend must have spent here on the floor while he was out drowning his guilt. He gets up to turn up the heating, then slides down to the floor as well, back against the wall. The space between their bodies is smaller than it ever was before, but of course, Sherlock wouldn't notice.

John realises when he picks the pack of cigarettes off the linoleum that this is a completely out of character thing for him to do, but when he lights up, it feels like somehow, he is showing Sherlock that he knows pain. Even if it's not the same kind of pain.

So they sit there. They smoke. And long after that, they sit there, in a kind of silence that still feels more comfortable than anything they have experienced lately. They don't speak. Neither John nor Sherlock knows what to say. So when the sun comes up, John gets up to make tea, and they drink it there in the corner. Quietly. Like they used to.


End file.
